The Great Cloud (2)
Introduction

This text is a short dhāraṇī-sūtra that may be regarded as an addendum to the longer sūtra called The Great Cloud (Toh 232)1 and seems to have been intended for ritual and recitation purposes. The longer discourse is a Mahāyāna scripture that emphasizes bodhisattva conduct and the teaching that the Buddha does not pass into parinirvāṇa. Among the many benefits listed for those who uphold The Great Cloud, timely rainfall is mentioned, and thus the sūtra came to be associated with rainmaking among Indian Buddhists. This short text, which circulated independently of the longer sūtra called The Great Cloud, is presented as the “sixty-fourth chapter” of that longer sūtra, which in all its extant versions contains only thirty-eight chapters.

The dhāraṇī-sūtra centers on an assembly of nāgas who receive a visit from the Buddha in their own palace. The assembled nāgas pay homage to the Buddha with a grand panoply of magically emanated offerings, and vow to support the Buddhist teachings. A visiting great nāga king asks him to explain how the nāgas can eliminate their own suffering and aid sentient beings by causing rain to fall and crops to grow. The Buddha, in response, extols the benefits of loving-kindness and then teaches them a dhāraṇī that when accompanied by the recitation of a host of buddha names will pacify the nāgas’ suffering and cause crops to grow. At the nāga king’s request, the Buddha then teaches another long dhāraṇī that will assist sentient beings by providing timely rain and in particular cause rain to fall during times of drought, thereby nourishing sentient beings. The Buddha then presents several dhāraṇīs and lists of buddha names that, when recited, should bring about their specified results. The text concludes with brief instructions for constructing an altar and holding a ritual to be performed when reciting these dhāraṇīs for the purpose of bringing rainfall.

The text appears to have circulated widely and enjoyed considerable popularity, as evidenced by the fact that it was translated into Chinese four different times between the sixth and eighth centuries. Two Tibetan translations of this text exist. Toh 234 is a shorter version entitled The Essence of All Nāgas, The Great Cloud Chapter on the Array of Winds (Mahā­megha­vāyu­maṇḍala­parivarta­sarva­nāga­hṛdaya). The slightly longer text translated here (Toh 235) is simply titled The Great Cloud, but in the colophon the title is similarly given as The Sixty-Fourth Chapter of The Great Cloud “The Array of Winds That Send Down Rainfall” Together With its Ritual Manual. This text is also included in the Tantra and Dhāraṇī sections of the Degé Kangyur, where it appears as Toh 657 and Toh 1063, respectively. The text is included in the Tibetan Kangyur collections of different periods and is also recorded in the Denkarma2 catalog of Tibetan imperial translations (but not in the Phangthangma catalog). Thus, it appears likely that it was first translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan by the early ninth century, as the compilation of the Denkarma is usually dated to 812 ᴄᴇ. Five versions of this text are also found among the manuscripts recovered from the caves of Dunhuang.3 In addition to these Tibetan translations, a partial Sanskrit version is also extant.4

The English translation presented here was based primarily on the Tibetan Degé edition, in consultation with the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) and the Stok Palace manuscript edition. The Tibetan was compared with the available Sanskrit manuscripts, and cases where there was significant divergence or where the Sanskrit presented a clearer reading have been noted in the endnotes.